1828.] The Court of Chancery. 571 



in the succeeding reign, to have attracted the attention of the lords ; 

 and a bill was introduced for the general reform of the Chancery Courts. 

 Nothing appears to have come of it ; and Mr. Parkes says (p. 265), 

 that, at the same period, " the House of Commons amused themselves 

 and the country with some abortive attempts at judicial reform/' The 

 reign of Anne imposed certain restrictions upon the filing of bills, and 

 " several legislative plans for the reform and improvement of the practice 

 of the Six Clerks' Office were contemplated," (p. 280) ; but the legislature 

 was more successful in the creation of new law than the redress of 

 "old ;" for, says Mr. Parkes (p. 288), " Her Majesty's Parliaments made 

 law in abundance, by adding to the statutes three hundred and thirty- 

 eight public, and six hundred and five private acts." Even the scenes 

 of judicial corruption and abuse which were, in the reign of George II*, 

 disclosed in the trial of Lord Macclesfield, failed in producing the 

 slightest reform ; yet that reign Mr. Parkes affixes as the commence- 

 ment of a real investigation into the abuses of Chancery. Investigation 

 and remedy are, however, two very different things in parliamentary 

 language : and, though a very valuable report followed the issuing of a 

 commission of inquiry, only a few immaterial additions were made to 

 the orders of the court, and " no legislative attempts whatever," says 

 Mr. Parkes, " were made, or even contemplated, to remedy the abuses 

 of the Court of Chancery, or to reform the general system of English 

 jurisprudence." One thousand four hundred and forty-seven public 

 acts, and one thousand two hundred and forty-four private ones, were, 

 nevertheless, added to the statute book. 



The reign of George III. opens with the discouragements of his Chan- 

 cellor Loughborough to every attempt to remedy the grievances of his 

 court. With the short interregnum of Lord Erskine, Lord Lough- 

 borough was succeeded by Lord Eldon, and the liberal patronage which 

 he bestowed upon reformers of every class, is too well appreciated to 

 require enlargement. The legislators of George III., with a strange 

 inconsistency, here, for once, mistrusted " the wisdom of their ances- 

 tors." Their ancestors had declared, by the most solemn and repeated 

 declarations ancestors, paternal and maternal ancestors, both on the 

 whig and tory, the aristocratical and democratical sides of the tree . 

 their enormous extent ; yet, strange to say, " It was not, indeed, until the 

 close of the reign of George III., that the legislature would even admit the 

 existence of Chancery abuses ! It was not till the perseverance and public 

 spirit of a few individuals, had, year after year, denounced those abuses 

 in the House of Commons, that the subject of popular complaint could 

 even be endured. All attempt at inquiry was crushed, to use a technical 

 expression of the highest tribunal in the country," (p. 355). With what 

 reluctance the late Chancery Commission was wrung from the legisla- 

 ture, our readers will not require to be reminded. Of its results we con- 

 fess ourselves unable to inform them, unless, indeed, an order which has 

 just issued from the court, the operation of which will be to increase the 

 expense of the Chancery subpoena, may be included in their number. 

 Mr. Brougham's motion has been followed up with another commis- 

 sion. It remains to be seen whether " any good thing can come out of 

 Nazareth." 



Such has been the eventful history of English law reform. Such the 

 oft-repeated miscarriage of an undertaking, which, with a singular an 

 anomalous harmony it was the interest no less of the people than of the 



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